50 Reasons Pentecost is on Sivan 6, Not Sunday! (Part 1)
EDITORIAL NOTE: This series of blog posts represents a majority, not a unanimous, view of the writers on this blog.
Today’s blog post differs from most. For one thing, it’s actually a miniseries of posts. For another, this isn’t a deep dive into one facet of a topic, but a 50,000-ft overview of a huge picture. If you’re interested in more details, you’ll find a link at the end.
The word “Pentecost” derives from the Greek pentekoste (Strong’s # G4005), which is a form of pentekonta (Strong’s # G4004), or “fifty.” This name comes from God’s command to count 49 days and observe this day on the 50th (Lev. 23:16).
In honor of Pentecost being the 50th day, I present to you 50 reasons Pentecost isn’t always on Sunday, as commonly taught today, but rather on Sivan 6: the 6th day of the 3rd Biblical month. This is the day most Jews have kept Pentecost throughout history, as we’ll see later. It’s also the day the Worldwide Church of God (then called the Radio Church of God) originally kept Pentecost back in the 1930s, as well as other Sabbatarian Christians long before that.
So God told us to count to the 50th day. While the New Testament calls this day Pentecost, the Old Testament calls it the Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot in Hebrew, because God also told us to count seven weeks (Deut. 16:9) or seven sabbaths (Lev. 23:15). But when do we start counting?
Section 1: Identifying the Sabbath
In Lev. 23:10-11, God told the Israelites to bring a sheaf of firstfruits from their land to the priest, who would then wave it before God “on the day after the Sabbath” (v. 11). Vv. 15-16 add, “And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the LORD.”
But what is “the day after the Sabbath”? Which Sabbath? A weekly Sabbath or an annual one? Remember, God’s annual Holy Days are Sabbaths, too. Scripture makes that plain.
In Gen. 2:1-3, God established the weekly Sabbath as the seventh and final day of each week. But notice! The word “Sabbath” never appears in this passage — not once. This was indeed the Sabbath — Ex. 20:11 says so — but Genesis neither calls it that, nor needs to.
Instead, we read, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (Gen. 2:2). “Rested” is the Hebrew verb shavat (Strong’s # H7673), which means “cease, desist, rest.” Shavat is also the root word of Shabbat, or Sabbath. A Shabbat is a ceasing (shavat) from work. God ceased from His work and told us to do likewise. That’s what makes it a Sabbath!
Like the weekly Sabbath, all of God’s Holy Days are Sabbaths because He told us to rest on them. Specifically, on the first two Holy Days, the first and last days of Unleavened Bread, God ordered His people to do “no manner of work” (Ex. 12:16; Lev. 23:7-8; Num. 28:18, 25). They are Sabbaths by any Scriptural or Hebrew definition. Days of ceasing from work.
Likewise, the Gospels call the First Day of Unleavened Bread a Sabbath. Jesus Christ died the day before it on Abib/Nisan 14, “the Preparation Day of the Passover” (John 19:14). Then, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, and John 19:31 add that this day, Nisan 14, was the preparation day for a Sabbath — that Sabbath being the First Day of Unleavened Bread! John plainly tells us “that Sabbath was a high day” (John 19:31).
So God told His people three times to rest on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, making it, by definition, a Sabbath. Then, the Gospels called it a Sabbath three more times. Since God repeated six times that the First Day of Unleavened Bread is a Sabbath, it seems reasonable to conclude that it’s important and that He meant it!
Now, a Sivan 6th Pentecost is counted from the day after the First Day of Unleavened Bread. A Sunday Pentecost is counted from the day after a weekly Sabbath. Which one is correct?
Reason 1: Which Sabbath?
If “the day after the Sabbath” (Lev. 23:11, 15) is the day after a weekly Sabbath, a problem pops up: Which one? The text doesn’t say. It could be any weekly Sabbath — and there are many!
Though the text doesn’t say, many claim it’s the weekly Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But sometimes the First Day of Unleavened Bread falls on a Sunday, and the Seventh Day of Unleavened Bread on a weekly Sabbath. In such a year, which Sunday do you count from? Do you start on the First Day of Unleavened Bread — on the day after a weekly Sabbath that was before the Feast? Or do you start on the day after the Seventh Day of Unleavened Bread — after the Feast is over? This becomes a debate every year it happens!
A Sivan 6th Pentecost has no such issues. The count starts on the second day of Unleavened Bread, the day after the annual Sabbath, no matter what day of the week it falls on. There’s never any confusion with a Sivan 6th Pentecost, “for God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (1 Cor. 14:33).
Reason 2: A Unique Sabbath
It seems only fair that there would be something special about this Sabbath, so the reader might easily identify it. As noted above, the Hebrew word for Sabbath, Shabbat, stems from shavat, which means “to rest or cease.” A Sabbath, by definition, is a rest from work.
The First Day of Unleavened Bread is a unique Sabbath, for one rests both from work (Ex. 12:16) and from leaven (Ex. 12:15). God said, “In the first day [of Unleavened Bread] ye cause leaven to cease [shavat] out of your houses” (Ex. 12:15; YLT). Leaven pictures sin, the works of the flesh. On this day, in God’s plan, one ceases both from work and from the works of the flesh.
In addition, the First Day of Unleavened Bread is the first annual Sabbath each year; it begins each Holy Day cycle. This is the Sabbath that can be readily identified by the reader.
Reason 3: Sunday Is the First Day of the Week
The Bible consistently describes the day we call “Sunday” as the first day of the week. No other verse in the Bible speaks of Sunday as “the day after the Sabbath,” but only as the first day of the week. Search, please, and see! If God had meant Sunday in Leviticus 23, then Scripture indicates He would’ve said “the first day of the week,” not “the day after the Sabbath.”
Reason 4: No “Day After” the Weekly Sabbath
The weekly Sabbath is the end of the week. Sunday is not, in the strictest sense, the day after the Sabbath, but more correctly the first day of the next week.
Spiritually speaking, too, there is no day after the weekly Sabbath. The Sabbath is the end of our journey. As Hebrews 4 shows, it pictures God’s Kingdom, His rest that we labor in this life to enter. Spiritually, the Sabbath lasts forever! “It shall be one day which is known to the LORD — neither day nor night” (Zech. 14:7).
Reason 5: An End vs. A Beginning
Whereas the weekly Sabbath is an end, the First Day of Unleavened Bread is a beginning. The weekly Sabbath ends each week; the First Day of Unleavened Bread begins each Holy Day cycle. The weekly Sabbath pictures the end of our journey; the Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures the beginning. “The day after the Sabbath” implies something beyond that Sabbath, the next step of a journey, and therefore best applies to the day after a beginning: the day after the First Day of Unleavened Bread.
Reason 6: Scriptural Context of the Wave Sheaf
The wave sheaf instructions in Lev. 23:9-15 appear in the context of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:4-8), not in the context of the weekly Sabbath (Lev. 23:3). It is therefore more sensible to identify this Sabbath as the high day Sabbath and not the weekly Sabbath.
Reason 7: No Work to be Done on the Sabbath
To offer the wave sheaf, as described elsewhere, one harvested a sheaf of barley, roasted the green grain to dry it out, winnowed it to remove any chaff, ground it into fine flour, sifted it, and made final preparations before presenting it to the priest. God’s command to offer the wave sheaf “on the day after the Sabbath” implies that all that preparatory work was inappropriate for a Sabbath or Holy Day.
But a Sunday Pentecost sometimes requires the wave sheaf to be offered on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, a Holy Day on which such work is forbidden. On the other hand, the second day of Unleavened Bread is never a Holy Day, and the Hebrew calendar doesn’t allow it to fall on a weekly Sabbath, so this work would never be done on a Sabbath or Holy Day.
Reason 8: “You Shall Not Delay”
In Ex. 22:29, God commanded, "You shall not delay to offer the first of your ripe produce and your juices. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to Me.” Again, in Deut. 16:9, God said, “You shall count seven weeks for yourself; begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain.”
Offering the wave sheaf on the first possible day, the day after the high day Sabbath, is no delay. But a Sunday wave sheaf would sometimes require delaying until the sixth day of Unleavened Bread, or even after the Feast is over, by some methods of counting!
Reason 9: Joshua 5 and “the Day After the Passover”
In Lev. 23:10, God commanded the Israelites to offer the wave sheaf upon entering the land, and in v. 14, He added, “You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God.”
So when the Israelites entered the land, we read, “And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day.” These were the exact things God told them not to eat “until the same day” they offered the wave sheaf, and here we read that they ate these “on the very same day.”
Now, the Passover lambs were slain on the afternoon of Abib/Nisan 14 — when Jesus Christ would later be slain as our Passover Lamb — and eaten that night on the 15th. Joshua 5 places this observance, spanning from the afternoon of the 14th into the night of the 15th, simply at “the fourteenth day of the month, at evening” (v. 10; YLT), the same phrase Ex. 12:18 uses to define the start of the First Day of Unleavened Bread.
In Hebrew, like English, “the day after” can mean the day after a night (Gen. 19:34), or the day after another day (Lev. 23:11). So “the day after the Passover” in Joshua 5 could mean either Abib 15 (the day after the night meal) or Abib 16 (the day after the 15th, when the Passover service concluded). But the context here shows us which day it was!
Josh. 5:11 tells us the Israelites ate produce of the land that day, which means they foraged in the countryside and harvested. And they not only harvested, but also dried the green ears with fire, winnowed them to remove the chaff, ground them into flour, sifted the flour to remove any further impurities, mixed the flour into dough, rolled it out, and baked it.
Has God ever permitted harvesting, winnowing, and other such work on Abib 15, a Holy Day? By no means! God expressly said, “No manner of work shall be done on” it (Ex. 12:16). He prohibited working on Abib 15 twice more in Lev. 23:7 and Num. 28:18.
God also told the people to return to their tents on the morning after the Passover ceremony: “And you shall roast and eat it [the Passover] in the place which the LORD your God chooses, and in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents” (Deut. 16:7). Since God told them to return to their tents on the Holy Day, they couldn’t very well be out in the countryside foraging and harvesting!
And while God allowed food preparation on the Holy Day if necessary (Ex. 12:16), the people had manna that day (Josh. 5:12) — the same bread God had fed them for 40 years, and the same bread they would’ve eaten with the Passover lamb. They had food already; they had no need to prepare food on Abib 15 that year!
So Joshua 5, in context, rules out Abib 15 as “the day after the Passover.” That leaves Abib 16 as the only option, a day on which God permitted work. The wave sheaf was offered on Abib 16, the second day of Unleavened Bread, the day after the high day Sabbath.
Reason 10: Joshua 5 and the Hebrew Calendar
Most Churches of God use the calculated Hebrew calendar for God’s Holy Days, as I also do. Yet many may not realize that the Hebrew calendar prevents a Sunday wave sheaf in Joshua 5!
If you’d like the details, Kyle Bacher and I co-authored a study paper on this very topic (despite disagreeing on the timing of Pentecost). But here’s a brief synopsis.
First, Exodus 16 indicates that, in the year of the Exodus, the 15th and 22nd days of Iyar (the second month) fell on weekly Sabbaths. If we count back from there, we find that Abib 14, when Israel killed the Passover lambs, fell on a Wednesday. That means Abib 15 fell on a Thursday.
Forty years, to the day, after that Passover in Egypt, Israel kept Passover in the Promised Land. On the calculated Hebrew calendar, Abib 15 never falls on a Sunday in the 40th year after it fell on a Thursday. Never!
By the calculated Hebrew calendar, Abib 15 in Joshua 5 wasn’t the day after a Sabbath of any kind. Therefore, per Leviticus 23, the wave sheaf couldn’t have been offered on Abib 15. The only possible wave sheaf day was Abib 16, just as we’ve already seen!
One can accept the calculated Hebrew calendar as God’s calendar or one can have a Sunday wave sheaf in Joshua 5, but one cannot have both. The two are mutually exclusive.
Reason 11: Joshua 5 Links the Wave Sheaf to Passover
But ultimately, Joshua 5 boils down to a simple concept: it connects the wave sheaf to Passover, and not to any other day. Why does the Bible emphasize that Israel ate produce of the land on the day after Passover if Passover had no bearing on whether they could eat or not? If the wave sheaf day had to be Sunday, and if it was mere coincidence that it fell on the day after Passover, then why emphasize only that it was the day after Passover and not Sunday? But Scripture does connect the wave sheaf to Passover, and it’s no coincidence!
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